The legend of Mrs. O'Leary

Ron Grossman

How survivors of the Chicago Fire sought scapegoats 140 years ago

Even as the embers of the Chicago Fire cooled, the saga of Mrs. O'Leary began. For 140 years, she has been alternately accused and exonerated of setting off the inferno that consumed almost everything in its path from the Near South Side to Fullerton Avenue.

Along with Michael Jordan, Al Capone and her cow, O'Leary is one of our city's most widely known flesh-and-blood icons, though it's hard to get a clear fix on her. To contemporaries, Catherine O'Leary was a mystery, and she remains so to scholars.

There's an irresistible instinct to assign human culpability to tragedies like the fire, which destroyed 18,000 structures, left 100,000 people homeless and killed at least 300, and O'Leary was a natural target. The blaze began about 9 p.m. on Oct. 8, 1871, in her barn. Prevailing winds took the flames north and east, sparing the house where she and her husband, Patrick, lived at 137 DeKoven St, now the home of the Fire Department's training academy.

Testifying before an investigating commission in 1871, O'Leary said she never milked after dark and pointed a finger at others. According to the Tribune's coverage, she said the tenants of a second house on the O'Leary property were partying that evening. Neighbors told O'Leary one reveler went to the barn and milked the cows. Why? she was asked.

The commission reported it couldn't conclude how the fire started, and O'Leary was determined to return to obscurity. She kept reporters and photographers at arm's length. No photo of her is known, allowing artists to depict her with a happy face or guilty look. Until her death in 1895, journalists vainly pounded on her door every October. She turned down an offer to tour with P.T. Barnum's circus, swinging a broom at his emissary.

In 1997, a City Council resolution proclaimed Mrs. O'Leary and her cow innocent, but very little changed. Legends trump resolutions every time, and the tale is retold thousands of times every summer tourist season.

Whatever her role in the disaster, Mrs. O'Leary certainly knew how to name-drop in quintessentially Chicago style.

Mrs. O'Leary's son James grew up to be gambling boss Big Jim O'Leary. Shortly before her death, she showed the door to the last reporter to try to interview her, saying, "I know bad people."

Daniel "Peg Leg" Sullivan: He was a neighbor who brought suspicion on himself by claiming to be first on the scene. More than one would-be Sherlock Homes noted that a wooden leg would have prevented Sullivan from sprinting the distance from where he said he first saw the conflagration to the O'Leary property.

French sympathizer: The Chicago Times newspaper on Oct. 23, 1871, printed an alleged confession by a self-proclaimed revolutionary who said the fire was his revenge for the suppression of the Paris Commune, a popular uprising earlier that year.

Boys shooting dice: In 1944, Northwestern University claimed a wealthy benefactor, Louis Cohn, asserted the fire was started by an accidentally overturned lantern as he, O'Leary's son and "other boys were shooting dice in the (barn's) hayloft."

The cow: On Dec. 17, 1871, the Tribune offered a tongue-in-cheek theory. The cow was being milked by someone from the party at the tenants' house and, resenting being an accomplice in that crime, kicked the lantern over on purpose.